Timely Rubies:Temporality and Greenlandic gems

• Published in: The Extractive Industries and Society
• Main Author: Brichet, Nathalia Sofie
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Greenland; greenlandic
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/timely-rubies(83e5c533-37e7-496d-9b29-35fedd2bf0c6).html; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.03.001

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Greenland, I explore how rubies as a natural resource create and organise forms of temporality in order for the stones to appear as a valuable good. I suggest that a circular argument is at play with regard to the Greenlandic rubies, namely that time creates valuable rubies and rubies create time. I further argue that this interdependence is an important self-fulfilling driver in creating a viable mining industry for gemstones in Greenland. A focus on temporality enables me to engage in this circularity and thereby explore one component in the work of making valuable rubies. Rubies, then, come to work for me as a lens through which to think about ways of creating and organizing time and vice versa. The underlying premise for this contribution is that time is thus not a universal measure that externally orders events, but rather a fieldwork feature deeply embedded in and generated through social practices. Accordingly, time in relation to mining does not so much present a philosophical challenge, but is rather just a “thing” that happens to be good to think a Greenlandic resource landscape through – as are rubies.